The tap'ring pyramid, the Egyptian's pride,
And wonder of the world, whose spiky top
Has wounded the thick cloud.
- Robert Blair, The Grave (l. 190)

Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was
unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from
it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's
ashes.
- Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (ch. III)

To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray
for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our
expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction
to our belief.
- Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (ch. V)

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and
probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim
high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram
once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be
a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.
- Daniel Hudson Burnham

You shall not pile, with servile toil,
Your monuments upon my breast,
Nor yet within the common soil
Lay down the wreck of power to rest,
Where man can boast that he has trod
On him that was "the scourge of God."
- Edward Everett, Alaric the Visigoth

He made him a hut, wherein he did put
The carcass of Robinson Crusoe.
O poor Robinson Crusoe!
- Samuel Foote, Mayor of Garratt
(act I, sc. I)

Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit,
and a rich monument is one embroidered.
- Thomas Fuller (1), Holy and Profane States
(bk. III, Of Tombs)

Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of
friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable
for the characters which they perpetuate.
- James Abram Garfield

The monument means a world of memories, a world of deeds, a world
of tears, and a world of glories. * * * By the subtle chemistry
that no man knows, all the blood that was shed by our brethren,
all the lives that were devoted, all he grief that was felt, at
last crystallized itself into granite, rendering immortal the
great truth for which they died, and it stands there to-day.
- James Abram Garfield

When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which
have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie
buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves
crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to
be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the
picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he
was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence,
dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be
cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with
themselves.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those
to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to
embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more
sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the
wasting shower, the unavailing north-wind, or an innumerable
succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to
demolish.
- Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)